David E. Kelley Writing Stephen King’s ‘Mr. Mercedes’ As Limited Series For Sonar

Sonar Entertainment will develop Stephen King’s bestselling novel Mr. Mercedes as a limited series for television. David E. Kelley (Boston Legal, Ally McBeal, The Practice) is attached to write the script and Jack Bender (Lost) will direct. Both will also serve as executive producers, as will Temple Hill Entertainment’s Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey and Sonar Entertainment CEO Gene Stein.

Mr. Mercedes, which King describes as his first hard-boiled detective tale, was published by Scribner in June. The story focuses on a psychopathic killer who commits mass murder by driving his Mercedes into a crowd and the recently retired cop who makes it his mission to bring him down. Mr. Mercedes is the first of a projected trilogy. The second novel, Finders Keepers, will be published by Scribner in May of this year.

“This is an amazing opportunity to adapt a script from material penned by one of the world’s most acclaimed and accomplished authors,” said Kelley. “Mr. Mercedes is a great story that will translate beautifully to the screen if I don’t mess it up.”

King is repped by Paradigm. Kelley is repped by CAA. Bender is with UTA.

9 Comments

bounder • on Jan 13, 2015 8:53 am

Here’s the first fancasting vote for David Morse to play Bill Hodges. I think he’d be awesome and he’s a great King actor (and even recently did an amazing job with the “Revival” audio book). And even though he doesn’t look it, he’s pretty dead on age-appropriate. It’s such a unique and sinister book.

Anonymous • on Jan 14, 2015 5:07 am

I completely agree. He would be awesome

Zach • on Jan 13, 2015 9:03 am

Good news all around. This is a great Stephen King book and better suited in scope for the small screen. Much better than the news that “The Stand” will be multi-episodes for the theatres which is just ridiculous.

Sam Douglas gets my vote for Bill. Suits the character perfectly. He may be best known for a video game character, but those who have played Heavy Rain would probably agree that Scott Shelby matches up to King’s description of Bill Hodges perfectly, almost like a checklist. His voicework and motion capture in the game were spot on for the character he was portraying.

He also had a brief cameo in Derailed (basically playing the same detective character, link below.)

I read the entire book picturing Scott Shelby as Hodges. I think Sam would make a fine Bill. My two cents anyway.